The Butler Way

You see the t-shirt to the left. Yeah, I picked that team to make the Final Four. I'm not bragging or anything...okay, okay...I AM very much bragging because short of the parents of Gordon Hayward, himself, I don't know anyone who picked the Bulldogs. Therefore, my bracket, which hailed Butler to emerge from the West Region, was something of a rarity. Yes, they were my sleeper pick and a well-researched one. I'm a native Hoosier, so I was already familiar with the Butler program.  I started following them during one of the holiday tournaments over Thanksgiving and had been impressed in the ten games or so that I had seen since that time. Plus, my Vols took them out in the 2008 NCAA Tournament, so they were officially in my good graces as my second favorite hoops team (sorry U of L), so it was a fun pick as well.

I can already see the first question forming in your head: Why are you blogging about basketball when you generally write about spiritual issues? Good question. One of focal points of the Compassion Revolution, and specifically Revolution II The Parables,  is shedding light on man's conventional wisdom versus Jesus' radical thinking...how fundamentalistic ideology has emerged from conventional wisdom, while often missing the point of Jesus' alternative wisdom altogether. What I see from Butler defies the conventional thinking that is so prominent in college basketball today. Butler is, indeed, a throw back to a more pure day in college athletics, but it's more than that.

I think back to one of Coach Stevens' press conference during that great tournament run. He basically said that, "Yes, this has been great for the program, but it's not really going to change the program significantly. We're still going to recruit kids that fit their philosophy: The Butler Way."

Hmm...that's different...radically different. Usually when a surprise team that is not in the perennial ranks of college basketball's elite makes the Final Four, that program's attitude is summed up in one word: CAPITALIZE! In other words, use that Final Four appearance to promote the program to attract some of those four and five star recruits that had previously slipped through the ole fingers. For example, consider two very good programs: Marquette and Maryland--two schools with solid basketball traditions but not among the Kentucky's, North Carolina's and Dukes of the hoops scene. Marquette used its 2003 Final Four appearance to nab a solid recruting class that same year;  and Maryland's 2002 title, netted it five 4-star recruits, even though over the next four years, that group could muster only an ACC Tournament Title as a six seed in 2004. The point: Capitalize...those programs are just two instances of using that sudden burst of attention and fame to take their program to the "next level" and position it among the elite in the game.

That philosophy may be college basketball's conventional wisdom, but it's not Butler's. Their thinking is far more radical. "We're just going to keep being who we are..." "Keep recruiting kids that buy into the Butler Way" What? No money to be pumped into new practice facilities or arenas? No woo-ing those elite kids to keep the money pumping in from another hopeful tournament run? Wow. That's refreshing and quite a throw back to a time when big budgets weren't that importa...wait, I'm not really old enough to remember a time when college basketball wasn't as much about the cash as it is now.

With that in mind, "Thanks, Butler! Thanks, Coach Stevens and Gordon Hayward et al." Yeah, I was pretty sick when Hayward's prayer rimmed out. Sick to see a great story that just didn't end right. Sick to see how depressed Hayward, Mack and Jukes were in their post game press conference. Sick to watch Duke celebrate a championship that could have easily belonged to the underdog Bulldogs. But--I perked up when I heard Coach Stevens' comments. I realized that maybe conventional wisdom had yet to conquer the world of college basketball completely and that maybe, just maybe there were still a few throw backs out there...a few radical-thinking throw backs!

Thanks for reading...
True